Meet me in Galilee

Matthew 28:1-10

I asked a friend this week, what do you want for Easter?

What would you like Easter to do for you?

She paused and pondered a bit, and then she answered, “I want to know that God is real. If Easter could do that for me, that would be fantastic.” 

Now, this friend is a Christian. She is someone with deep belief and conviction, and believing in God is not what she meant. I want to know it, she said, to live like it is true.  “I believe that it’s true; I want to trust that it’s true.”

We are all about belief in our rational, scientific modern world.  When Easter rolls around we get to this moment which is super central to our Christian faith, and we immediately engage our heads-  what does this mean? How does God save us?  Why do we need saving? What exactly do we believe?

And I suspect we come to church on Easter and this belief thing is kind of the elephant in the room.  We are here because we do believe, very passionately, or we come because we love someone who believes and who wants us to be with them on Easter, so we sit here aware that we don’t really believe but maybe we used to, or we want to, or we feel a little sorry for those who still need to.

Some of us bring decades of church baggage interpreting all of this in helpful, but more often unhelpful ways, so we sit here kind of believing, and filtering out the things we don’t really believe, and it becomes almost entirely an intellectual exercise or a cultural tradition, with things that are fun to sing about, perhaps, but so far away from our real selves and real lives.

In church we remember Jesus and talk about belief in Jesus or being like Jesus, or what his resurrection means. We ask what Jesus would do and try to do that, and study what Jesus said and try to obey that.  We like the idea that he was raised from the dead but, to be honest, we often act as though he is still dead.

I saw a church advertise yesterday, “Tomorrow we will gather around the empty tomb…” and I thought, it’s true, isn’t it? All over the world we will gather around the empty tomb and we will commemorate Jesus’ resurrection and we will celebrate that he was no longer dead, and we will talk about what it means and how it defeats death and changes things and try not to think too hard about the things that feel the same, or the ways death seems just as powerful as ever.

But in all the different gospels’ telling of Easter day, not one of them has any people gathering around the empty tomb.  In Matthew the angel shows up in cinematic drama and moves the stone aside from the already empty tomb, not for Jesus to get out – that’s already happened, but for the women to look in, just to show  them – see? Come closer and look.  He’s not here, got it? There’s nothing to see here. Don’t linger here. This isn’t’ the point.  He’s already gone. He’s alive, just like he said would be. Now go. Quickly.  Go where he will be and find him there.

There is no – “Come venerate the empty tomb, resurrection is where it’s at,” there’s no, “go back to Jerusalem to the center of power and the Temple and we’ll take up the cause of transforming religion.” There is no answering back the rapidly spreading lies that his followers stole the body, no defending what really is happening or avenging his reputation or making sure people are believing the right thing about him.

Instead he shows up briefly and greets them and then says, meet me in Galilee, which, as my insightful friend noted, is like saying, Meet me in Saint Louis Park.

Go to the ordinary place where we first hung out: the diner where we were introduced, Go to the parking lot of the Dairy Queen off the freeway where we exchanged cars that one time, and I’ll be waiting for you there.

If I could hit a button and adjust our English translations of the bible to make them more truly read what they actually mean, I would run a “find and replace” to change every place where it says “Believe” into “Trust”.  Believe – as an intellectual agreement – something that happens above the neck, is a Latin idea, not there in the original texts.  The Greek word most often used is pistis, faith, which means trust – it’s an action, a gut reality, that actually means “to be persuaded by God.” 

You can’t manufacture trust or fill up on it before you act. The only way to trust is to trust.  To act as though it is real, so that in acting on it, it can become real.  Trust, faith, is a gift from God, grown inside you by God, and replenished by God.  It’s not mustered up from fiercely clung to certainty, but born gently and continually from open-hearted, vulnerable risking to step into what you long for.

For Easter, my friend wanted to trust that God is real.  My friend wanted to live as one persuaded by the Holy One that Jesus is with us right now.

Jesus didn’t ask the disciples to believe he’d been raised, he asked them to meet him. 

I don’t expect any of you to believe in resurrection today. I don’t expect you to believe in God, even.  I expect God to meet us.

I expect us to experience resurrection in our own lives.

Can you hear the difference?  

In every single resurrection account in all of scripture not one person believed it, even those who saw the empty tomb or talked to him face to face didn’t believe.  It was not until they experienced him, until he met them and they met him – in their doubt and disbelief, in their fear and their joy, in the total reality of whatever they were in at the moment – it wasn’t until they went to Galilee, or watched him break bread, or touched his wounded side, or heard him say their name, or felt their hearts burning within them at his words, that they knew, trusted, in that deep, gut reality, life action kind of way, that Jesus was indeed alive.  And then resurrection was just a part of the story, it was just the way God did it, the means by which the living Jesus is here with us. 

Because resurrection is not an idea or a belief. It’s what comes after death. It’s the new life that comes after we’ve let go.  It’s the hope that is born from a place of loss and despair. It’s when tragedy is shot through with overwhelming love and inexplicable peace, when patient grieving abates and washes away and something new and unexpected wakes up and yearns to be born in us.  It’s when you find that fear’s hold on you has been broken and you are free.  It’s when you find yourself able to love, able to reach out and be with and for another despite all the risks of heartbreak or failure.  It’s life, life, life. They believed he was dead. And then he met them, alive, and they too were resurrected.

God came into all of it, completely, everything that defeats us and breaks us and kills us, God came into that, and was defeated and broken, and killed, and buried in a tomb.  And it was all over.  

Until an angel that looked like lightening shook the earth and terrified the guards into unconsciousness and announced to the grieving followers that Jesus was no longer dead, but out there in the world, alive, looking for us to join him in resurrection life, in enduring, unquenchable, not to be stopped by anything, life.

And with the risen Jesus right there in it with us, the end of the story is decided: and there is no death so great that life is not greater, no evil so powerful that love will not prevail.  And Jesus keeps on moving, keeps on calling us to life, alongside God and others, keeps on sending us into the world, into our lives, to find Jesus there. 

Even when there is the scary broken relationship, or the internal beckoning we’re hesitant to follow because we know it will change us, or the boring, familiar, ordinary routine.  Even when there is the thing we most fear facing and spend our energy avoiding.  Jesus, whom death could not contain, the very resurrection and life himself, has already gone there ahead of us to our own Galilees and is waiting to meet us in the place where trust grows. 

My friend who wants to know God is real - if she were sitting here today, I would feel pressure perhaps, at first, to convince her with my eloquence or my sound doctrine or my compelling arguments that God is indeed real.  To point to the empty tomb and wax eloquent on the meaning of the cross and give her some killer quotes from smart folks and great reasons for belief.  But likely that would do nothing for her.  It would engage her in an intellectual exercise that might helpfully interpret things, but not really change things. 

But if I were brave, what I would say to her, to all of us, is this: There is not a thing I or anybody else can say that can make you know that God is real.  God has to do that.  

If you really want to know that God is real, invite God to persuade you. Expect to be met, try out trusting.  It’s going to feel different than believing – it’s going to happen less inside you and more between you, around you, through you; it will be centered less in your head and more in your hands and your heart, and it will change you. 

Don’t be afraid, I know you are looking for Jesus who was crucified – but he is not here.  He is alive, out there in the world, wreaking resurrection all over the place. So go to your Galilee; and there you will see him.

Amen.

Easter is Coming...

This is one of my favorites.

A blessed Holy Week to you.

Not our way

Matthew 21:1-17

I'll be the first to admit it, Palm Sunday is kind of confusing.  

It is such spectacle, and we know what comes next so it feels strange to make a big thing of it.  We’re mixing all these 1^st century customs with 21^st century interpretations and generally make kind of a mess of things.  In fact, it feels like Jesus himself is messing with things.  He is doing these big symbolic and prophetic things, things that seem fraught with meaning, layers of impenetrable meaning, and he doesn’t feel compelled to explain any of it.

The way Matthew tells it, immediately after the triumphal entry, Jesus heads into the temple and overturns the tables of the moneychangers and yells at them, then he turns around and heals people, and children and grown ups are cheering and calling out and it all sounds very chaotic and uncontrolled, and it angers chief priests and scribes, and then Jesus tells them off and leaves town. 

So in one sweeping move we see Jesus go from parade to protest to provocation and it all kind of screams parable because his actions both reveal something about the way of fear and illumine something about the way of God but leave it all wide open to interpretation.  We know that pattern!  Having spent Lent with the parables, and knowing that is exactly what parables do, clear open space for God to speak into our lives, invite us to be disturbed and challenged and stirred, it almost feels like this is a parable acted out instead of told.  Once there was a Messiah, who told his followers to go and find a donkey and also a baby donkey, for a parade he was about to hold….  

What do you want us to see, Jesus?

If we are anyone in this living sort of parable, we almost always see ourselves as the people lining the streets, laying down our cloaks, taking up branches, celebrating the arrival of a savior, or curiously watching a spectacle, whichever the case may be, but most likely shouting along with the rest of them “Hosanna!’

And most of the time, most of us think of Hosanna as some kind of celebration word– like the word we will find again next week when we celebrate the resurrection. But Hosanna literally means “Save us.” Save us in the highest heaven, save us, O blessed, Son of David!  He is coming to save us!

And I wonder, as those lining the streets before Jesus’ arrival, what are the hosannas that we shout?

 There is so much in a hosanna, so many unspoken beliefs about ourselves and God and the world, and what or who needs saving, and what we need to be saved from and how it this saving should happen, or who is worth asking. 

In their hosannas the crowds are projecting onto Jesus everything they want Jesus to be – king, deliverer, conqueror, overthrower of oppressive Roman rule, redeemer, worthy of all glory, laud and honor, even if he is only riding on a donkey and not being drawn by a team of horses in an ornate carriage, even if he is wearing peasant garb instead of dressed in robes of royalty, even if his procession is made up of children and day workers and the sick and broken seeking healing and ordinary passers by, instead of dignitaries flanked by guards in polished silver, even if the authorities are hiding away plotting his death instead of rolling out the red carpet and setting out the feast to welcome him to town. 

They all see Jesus as they want him to be, and ignore all the inconsistencies before their eyes, and their hosannas are filled with who they think Jesus should be for them.

But then, it’s kind of always been this way with him, hasn’t it?

Messiahs are supposed to be heroic, brave and strong, obviously! and striking, and larger than life and not really in any way weak or ordinary or foolish. 

But Jesus was born in a smelly barn in a thrown-together moment of making-do, to a shamed girl and her frightened husband, and he was celebrated and welcomed by nobody sheepherders and suspect foreigners.

 

And now, this moment of triumph, this debut to all the world, is mirroring the first pronouncement and debut in its last-minute, rinky-dink wrongness, when angels sang to peasant shepherds on a hillside announcing that God is breaking in, that God has come to share this life with you and me, that something irreversible is about to take place.

But all along God is seeking to give up power and take on weakness. Real, raw, basic, dirty, complicated and dying humanity.  And so, in this moment that has the whole town in tumult, Jesus’ entrance on a donkey and it’s colt, the crowds are saying something true, about themselves and about the world and most importantly about Jesus – who he is and what he’s about.  But they don’t really know they are. 

This parade, protest and provocation, unfolding amidst all of their various hosannas, this too declares that God is breaking in, God has come to share this life with you and me, and something irreversible is about to take place.

But just maybe not like you think.

If the crowds that day were designing a savior, he would ride into town and materialize an army – human or angelic, and bring vengeance and justice and take down their oppressors – preferably humiliating them in the process.  We have a pretty good idea what their hosannas were crying out for.

Even the religious leaders who asked him if he heard what the children were saying about him – they had their idea of what a savior should be, one who would behave with decorum, and not a hint of the kind of profanity that would desecrate the temple and then heal people willy-nilly and let everyone get so worked up and turned around.  Their salvation plan would unfold decently and in order.

And I must say, If I were God – a kind of risky game to play but go with me here – if I were God, I would NOT have done it this way either. This week would NOT begin with this strange, ridiculous parade and end with a cross. I would not have done it in such an ugly, tragic, cruel and base way.

My way would be cleaner and softer. I’d make the world a guest room with crisp sheets and a thick comforter and flowers in a vase and warm, homemade scones waiting on a tray.  And the world would just get it, just apologize, and forgive, and choose love, and come and have a nice warm bath and put on a big fluffy robe and tuck in for the night and I’d make the world a huge pancake brunch in the morning and we’d all start over the way things were meant to be.  That’s how I’d bring salvation.

If we were saving the world, let’s face it, we’d all do it differently.  We’d accost the world Robin Hood style, relieving the rich of their horded wealth and delivering it triumphantly to the poor so they could be fed and clothed and nobody would be hungry or in need. 

Or we’d convert the world to our own faith, or our own version of our own faith, so any arguing would simply cease in the pervasive daze of unconditional agreement and happy conformity.  Done, salvation.

If we were saving the world we would immediately cure cancer and wipe disease from the face of the earth through some miraculous ingenuity and global generosity, and everyone would have access to any medicine they needed at any time, and it would always work. Saved. You’re welcome.

Or we’d summon the world to our office and close the door and have a respectful, firm and informative conversation that would change the world’s mind and open the world’s eyes, and the world would leave enlightened and empowered and it would waste not, want not, reduce, reuse, recycle and start taking family vacations and stop taking mood-altering substances.

Or we’d put the world into a deep sleep and give the world a life-changing dream, everyone simultaneously, and the world would wake up and pile all their weapons on a big bonfire and sing cumbaya and roast marshmallows over its embers and give each other carpool rides home afterwards.  Salvation complete.

But not this way. I would bet not a one of us in this room would choose to ride a donkey straight through people’s wildly wrong expectations and competing agendas, into controversy and conflict, politics and power - not once calling any of them wrong or defending your reputation, intentions or very life, by the way - and submit to whatever comes of it.

All of the ways we would bring salvation pick whatever we find most disturbing and fearful in the world and try to escape us from it. 

But God’s way of salvation comes into all things, in weakness, to live with us and die for us. Who would’ve believed it? 

Did the angels in heaven join in the celebration the street that day? 

How silent was the shock of the cosmos when it led to the cross?

Way back at the beginning, when God spoke existence into being, God made all things to be in harmony, in perfect trust and interdependence, completely connected to our Creator in love.   All throughout scripture and history God continues to relentlessly draw us back into this connection, and then, in Jesus Christ, God crawls inside the human experience and shares it with us, to ensure that we are not alone, to expose every single thing that separates us from the love of God and connection with each other, and to illumine the core of it all, that we belong to God, whose love permeates and transcends all things.

Like it or not, the parade of Palms finds its response in the cross. 

And as the people gathered there to see Jesus and shouted out their cries for salvation  - in all their hope and anticipation, their fear and desperation, the needs they knew and the ones they avoided knowing, and all the expectations and assumptions that they waved before them when he rode by on his donkey, and everything that they wanted Jesus to be - God heard them, as God always hears them, and God answered.  

The answer is just not one we would choose.  

It is not our answer.  It is God’s answer to us.

We think we know what we need.  So when we pray, we lift up all our own ideas about what we think will save us, and we address them all to who we think Jesus should be, waving them around in God’s face, and even telling God, from time to time, what would work best, in our humble opinion.

And God gently takes all of that into Godself, and then does salvation God’s way instead.  God’s answer exposes the way of fear within all our Hosannas – all the ways we wish to “be saved” that would help us to feel secure or strong, protect us from our insecurities and our losses, keep us from suffering or sorrow.  It exposes all the ways we try to make Jesus who we think Jesus should be.

And then God’s answer illumines the way of God – which is, from the beginning, to, in every possible way, continue to draw us into the love of God – to join us in suffering and take it into God’s very self, so that nothing might separate us from the love of God.

So whatever our hosannas may be, however pure or selfish their intention, however well spoken or wordless, God takes them in, and bears within Godself all life and death itself, for us.

 And I, for one, feel a brief moment of wanting to stop God – like, wait, God, isn’t there another way?  I can think of all sorts of better ways, why this?

 But God, who came to share EVERYTHING with us, shares even this sentiment, a few days after this scene, when Jesus, sweating blood he’s so freaked out and shaken up about what’s coming, prays his own hosanna, his own “save me from this hour” begging that there be another way. 

And then he surrenders again to the way of God, and finds the strength to move into the days ahead in complete connection to the source of his being, to the love that claims us and transcends even death.

Instead of all the strong and sexy and sterile ways we’d bring salvation, all pain-free and perfect, and completely outside our experience as human beings, God chose to do it this way: vulnerable, weak, messy, and foolish, letting what breaks us break God too, so that nothing, ever, can separate us from God’s love which is the source and conclusion of our being.

So today our palms represent our hosannas, our “save us”es, and we’ve got all kinds: honest hosannas and defiant hosannas, hopeful hosannas and desperate hosannas, deluded hosannas and tentative hosannas.  

And they are all welcome, they are all part of the story; God has invited us to wave before Jesus our hearts on our sleeves.  Our own schemes and hopes for salvation, while perhaps misguided, reflect our need and our hunger and our longing - for healing and wholeness, for reconciliation and forgiveness, for things to be made right, for God’s way to reign.  

So God, who came to share our humanity, hears our hosannas.

And also, like the crowd gathered there that day, when we gather in our brokenness and belovedness, lifting up our own hosannas to our own versions of Jesus, we nevertheless say something true to, and about, the real Jesus. 

We say something maybe without realizing it, and even when it doesn’t feel like it, and even when we don’t believe it, and even when we KNOW we will turn our back on it at one point or another.  

When we stand here with our palms and dare to lift our own hosannas, then, like the crowds in Jerusalem and the angels over Bethlehem, we too announce to each other and to the world that God is breaking in, that God has come to share this life with you and me, that something irreversible is about to take place.  

So, come, sisters and brothers, and lift up your cries for salvation to the Lord our God, Hosanna! Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord. 

Hosanna in the Highest Heaven!

Amen.

Prayer exercise for Holy Week: 

Take home a palm and this week let it represent your own hosannas.  

God comes not how we think God should come, thank God, but how we most need God to come. Let the palm represent for you that tension, 

How might God expose the hold the way of fear has on you, and illumine the freedom the way of God has for you? 

How will God meet you anew this week, and draw you deeper into God’s love?  

If you would like, use a sharpie to to write on the palm anything you would like to remember during the week.

The Move Back into Freedom

A friend and colleague, Rob Smith, pastor of Spirit of Life Presbyterian Church, invited me to blog on the topic of Sabbath as part of their Year of the Bible, Here is what I wrote.  (You can find the original post here).

What if I told you that most of us live like we believe we are slaves most of the time?  In slavery, you belong to a master who dictates your entire identity, worth and purpose, and even directs your very days and hours. Like the Israelite slaves of Pharaoh, we are told that we matter only if we produce, produce, produce.  In our modern day slavery, it’s a little more sophisticated – we also matter if we consume, consume, consume.  As long as we are part of the relentless system of production and consumption, we have value.  So we measure our worth  – and others do too – by how much we produce or consume in a day.

But how does life work for a people who are free?  
The Ten Commandments, or “Ten Words,” are given by God to a people coming out of generations of slavery into a new life of freedom.  The first few commandments talk about our connection to God – to whom we truly belong, and the last few talk about our connection to other people with whom we share this life. But right in the middle of these valuable guidelines is this long and very detailed “hinge” command about keeping the Sabbath.  
What is this doing there? 
Why is this so essential that it would make it into God’s top ten instructions for life? 
And what could it possibly say to us today?

I want to suggest that Sabbath does two absolutely vital things, without which we lose our very humanity.

First, Sabbath reminds us whose we are.

You belong to the God who brought you out of the land of Egypt!  begins the Sabbath command.  (Deuteronomy 5:12-15)  Outside forces can’t dictate the terms of your existence.  Only God can.

Sabbath refuses to let us be defined by a lifestyle of slavery and relentless production.  When you are just being and not doing, your worth cannot come from what you contribute.  You are not defined, owned or measured by what you make, earn, buy, sell, own, produce or accomplish, Sabbath says. You are free.

Also, Sabbath as God commands it is when everybody rests, even the land!  So my neighbor and my daughter and the kid who mows my lawn and my boss, and the person on TV who seems so important and essential are all just people, just like me. Loved by God, and caught in the cogwork of an overextended, under nourished life, just like me.  You can no longer measure your worth by what you produce and consume, or rank yourself against one another. You belong to God and not to Pharaoh.

Second, Sabbath reminds us who we are.

This God to whom we belong is the creator who looked on creation and called it good, the maker of heaven and earth who rested and enjoyed what had been made.  (Exodus 20:8-11) And rest itself is part of creation’s cycle, and actually is part of how God created everything on earth to function, you and me included.

We are made in God’s image and called to participate with God in the world. How can we do that if we never stop to rest?  We are actually supposed to enjoy what we are part of in this short life, and to call life good, like the Creator in whose image we are made!  
We are all God’s beloved children, and we are all made in God’s image– each one different, each one with specific things that fill us with joy and satisfaction and express our true self and God’s unique delight in us.  
When we stop doing and allow ourselves the space to be, things slow down and we notice.  And we can see, sometimes in tiny, ordinary and surprising ways, God’s pervasive presence in the world and our own place within it.  And our capacity to praise our creator, and to delight in life, grows deeper.  
Observing the Sabbath reconnects with who we are, and celebrates who God made us to be.  Resting on purpose makes us human again. 

The other nine commandments take the people out of slavery. The Sabbath commandment takes slavery out of the people.* Sabbath sets us free, by grounding us in us again in the truth of whose we are and who we are.

I want to invite you to accept the life-saving gift of Sabbath.

This week, set aside a day.  Or if you need to start slower, a half day, or an evening, an hour early in the morning, and STOP. Rest. Notice. 

Turn off your phone and the TV.  

Put your work in another room.  

Ignore the dishes in the sink and let the laundry wait for tomorrow.  

Pause to hear the voices that compete to tell you who you are supposed to be and let them go.  

Listen to the lies that try to tell you what owns you and let them go. 

Close your eyes and look deep in your soul and ask yourself, What would give me joy right now?  What does my soul need? 

Look into the face of your kid or your spouse, or call up a friend, and ask them, What do you need to say no to today, to remember that you’re free?  

And let God meet you at that place.

*I think Walter Brueggemann said this somewhere, but if so, I can no longer find the citation. But props anyway - check out his awesome book, Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now.